SKYLIGHT
scored | mixed-media performance
composed, produced, & edited by Leo Gevisser
When I took a visit to Dia:Beacon in early 2024, I was completely taken by Robert Irwin’s piece Full Room Skylight – Scrim V – Dia, Beacon (1972/2002). It felt as if the composition of the natural light filtering through the warehouse’s own oblique skylight took on a more immersive form entirely: warmer, softer, untouched. At the time of conceiving a piece for vibraphone and bass flute for the highSCORE Artist Residency & Master Classes, I still found myself revisiting the exact psychological changes I felt in that room.
This piece has the vibraphone’s and bass flute’s ranges gradually expand and subsequently fill in harmonically from one initial tone up until the end: where the bass flute is at its lowest and the vibraphone near its highest. Each instrument vibrates in various relative speeds and tempi to one another—the vibrato and tenuto/portato notes of the flute with the motor and beaters of the vibraphone—these vibrational speeds also expanding gradually in parallel to the expansion in register. The vibrations between these two instruments are, for the most part, non-sympathetic; however, the pitched electronics that are heard alongside each resonating held note all vibrate sympathetically.
All of these elements being merely acoustically- and electronically-resonating approximations as to what exactly I experienced in that space. A subliminal expansion, or a spiritual vibration, of sorts.
Mixed-media:
2-channel sound
Performed by:
Sonia Formenti — bass flute
Matteo Savio — vibraphone
Instrumentation:
Vibraphone, bass flute
Tuning systems utilized:
12-EDO, 17-limit JI
